Jenkins - Webhooks OR PollSCM

Question

In a scenario where continuous integration is important, for triggering builds which is a better option Webhooks or PollSCM.

These are my current understanding on both methods:

• PollSCM is a heavy operation and depending on it to trigger build means we need to fire it frequently. But the configuration is easier and it is safer than web hooks as Jenkins will be communicating to code repo.
• Web hooks can give you exact build trigger time without checking for it constantly. But on the other hand, there are security concerns when you are opening up a connection from outside and configuration is not easy compared to PollSCM.

Looking forward to know the exact pros and cons of both ways.

Answer 1

If your build cycle is very short (a few minutes) and if you want to trigger a build for each commit, the Webhooks solution is better.

But if your build cycle is longer (15/20 minutes) and if you don't need to build for each commit, the PollSCM is a good candidate :)

In my company, we are using Git/Stash and Jenkins + a Webhook to trigger a build every time something is committed. For the pull requests, we are using the Stash pullrequest builder plugin for Jenkins.